Reading India

Sometime last year, in the midst of all the chaos and uncertainty that the pandemic brought over our lives, we realized that The Bookshop had evolved into much more than what we’d have ever imagined. While earlier, we took great pride in the quiet that enveloped us as we watched the Semal tree bloom right…

What Writers Read: Madhav Khosla

For July 2021, we had in our #whatwritersread series, the prolific public law and politicaltheory writer Madhav Khosla, who generously shared with us his favourite books to recommend! Madhav is the Ambedkar Visiting Associate Professor of Law at Columbia University, and a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. One of the finest researchers and writers…

What Writers Read: Jeet Thayil

In May, we were delighted to have Jeet Thayil drop by The Bookshop! He was very generous with his time and picked out a few of his favorite books, for our #WhatWritersRead series – as a poet, he was naturally drawn towards our poetry collection. A writer whose work has defied conventions in both poetry and prose,…

What Writers Read: Manu S. Pillai

In November 2021, we continued our #whatwritersread series, this time with the prolific and masterful Manu S. Pillai, one of the youngest and soundest historians working in the country today. His debut non-fiction book, The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore, tells the story of the system of matrimonial succession that led to the adoption…

What Writers Read: Rudrangshu Mukherjee

Dr. Rudrangshu Mukherjee is one of the most esteemed historians and academics of India. He was formerly the Opinions Editor for The Telegraph newspaper, Kolkata and is presently the Chancellor Ashoka University, where he also serves as Professor of History. He was the founding Vice-Chancellor of Ashoka when the University began in 2014. His 1980 D.Phil thesis at the University of…

What Writers Read: Shrayana Bhattacharya

Shrayana Bhattacharya is an economist at the World Bank and now the author of the hugely popular Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh. We were super excited to have her for an event during the month of March, and she was also kind enough to participate in our What Writers Read series! Shrayana Bhattacharya: “To paraphrase Barthes:…

What Writers Read: Keshava Guha

For the month of January, we returned with What Writers Read, this time, with Keshav Guha, literary and political journalist, and the author of Accidental Magic, a one-of-a-kind story of adult Harry Potter obsessives in early 2000s Boston. Keshava has been a dear friend of The Bookshop for years, and one of the most astonishingly…

What Writers Read: Janice Pariat

For the month of March, the most awe-inspiring Janice Pariat has curated a reading list for our monthly series. Janice is the first person from Meghalaya to win a Sahitya Akademi award, which was in 2013 for her unbelievable debut collection of short stories- Boats on Land. Her novella The Nine Chambered Heart is an…

What Writers Read : Sudhanva Deshpande

A few weeks ago we spent an afternoon with the absolutely delightful Sudhanva Deshpande, dear friend of The Bookshop, actor, publisher, author of one of our favourite reads of last year (Halla Bol- a memoir of Safdar Hashmi and perhaps one of the best books about Delhi’s University life), Delhi’s favourite cyclist, and of course,…

What Writers Read: Raghu Karnad

Since we revived our Author Evenings in 2017, we’ve planned an event with Raghu Karnad innumerable times, only for them to have never come to fruition. Many ideas were bounced, from a conversation on journalism to a reading of his book Farthest Field, a marvelous personal memoir of the Indian experience of WWII. We hosted…